


Some Nights They Danced

by InkofLethe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, except i wasn't alive in the 90s and have never been to britain so, first through seventh year plus a bit of an epilogue, muggle references line up with real life 90s britain as well as I could, muggleborns dealing with weird muggleborn things in the face of war, probably unrealistic depiction of upper class society, so hermione and ron end up together but it's not a big part, takes place through the series, the main pairing is strictly platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkofLethe/pseuds/InkofLethe
Summary: She blinks at the boy her age as he sits down on the bench facing hers.“Hello, my name’s Justin Finch-Fletchley. I think we’ve met before. In the muggle world at some ball or garden party or something.”Well, she hadn’t expected that. And here she was thinking that she’d successfully left behind the world of old money, peerage, and dancing at honest-to-god balls.He did look kind of familiar though.“Hermione Granger.”***As tagged, this is the story of the Platonic Only relationship between Hermione Granger and fellow muggleborn, Justin Finch-Fletchley. Both properly raised in muggle, upper class London Society, which means nothing to the snooty purebloods of the wizarding world.(I know nothing about upper class London society circles. Or any upper class society circles. Except that there are definitely ones where stuff like cotillion is still a Thing.)
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Justin Finch-Fletchley, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Some Nights They Danced

She doesn’t look up at the sound of nearby footsteps—the tiny courtyard was a sharp turn from the nearest major corridor but not far from it—but her head does snap up when someone sits down on the bench facing hers. It’s a boy her age with a yellow tie neatly knotted at his collar. She’s not certain if they’ve met already but she definitely doesn’t remember his name so she merely blinks at him, head tilting slightly.

“Hello, my name’s Justin Finch-Fletchley. I think we’ve met before. In the muggle world at some ball or garden party or something… probably at multiple.”

Well, she hadn’t expected that. And here she was thinking that she’d successfully left behind the world of old money, peerage, and dancing at honest-to-god balls.

He did look kind of familiar, though nothing about him particularly stood out either. 

“Hermione Granger.” She hesitated and ended up offering her hand at an awkward angle, not quite vertical enough to be a handshake but not flat as if she was asking for a kiss on the back of her hand. Those were still standard in Society circles.

He also seemed to hesitate and they ended up exchanging a limp handshake.

His hand was warm but dry. She hoped her palms weren’t sweaty either.

Tight anxiety started to bubble deep within her stomach as she took back her hand and began tapping on the pages of her book lightly. 

“It was lovely meeting you properly. See you around, I’m sure.”

“Yes, see you around.”

He hovered behind his bench for a long moment after her farewell. Hermione let out a relieved sigh as the last bit of his robes disappeared around the corner and went back to reading about the history of the magical world.

***

The next time she speaks with him is during the annual New Year’s Eve Ball. 

As usual, she did not want to go but seeing as she missed several events while gone for the semester, her parents insisted.

So, dressed up in a too warm gown of midnight blue velvet and hair pushed back with a matching headband that kept slipping, she sat behind an absurdly large potted plant, hiding from the crowd and reading a muggle novel. 

She did know many of the other kids there and was friendly enough with a handful of them. Her most tolerable cousin, nine-year-old Jessa, was around somewhere too. Really, she had been sort of friends with more people here than at school. At least a third of the children here were supposed child geniuses and she thought she was rather average in terms of social skills among them. 

But she was even less sure what was currently going on or popular than she used to be and after getting a weird stare for the fourth time in ten minutes from the girls she had tried talking to, she gave up.

She was exhausted too and nearly nodding off when he stumbled upon her.

“Err, Granger?”

She blinked rapidly, straightening so quickly from her position leading against the wall that a vertebrate popped.

“Oh, hi, Finch-Fletchley.”

“Didn’t realize you were here at all. Uh, can I join you for a bit? I have no clue what’s happening in pop culture anymore. I can’t talk to anyone for longer than five minutes.”

She laughed and gestured towards herself as she marked her book. She was sitting on her awfully itchy scarf in order to keep the dust off her admittedly pretty dress and moved so he could join her, but he merely sat himself down on the dark, wooden flooring.

“It’s crazy how much you miss in a couple months. I still feel like I so obviously know way less than before. Not that I ever knew as much as anyone else beforehand either.”

Justin frowned for a split second before smiling and nodding. “I managed to listen to most of the top songs that came out since September but it’s not like I can watch an entire show in less than a month. And I think absolutely all of them are talking about _Dark Seasons_.”

“Oh! That was the show Anna and Penny were talking about when I gave up and started reading back here.”

“What are you reading?”

“ _Alice in Wonderland_. It’s one of the few muggle books I own that I haven’t finished yet. I’ve had it for years but something always seems to interrupt me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Hermione tilted her head as Justin got up. “Why are you sorry?”

“You said something always interrupts you and that’s me this time. I’ll leave you to your reading. I’d best be finding my parents soon, I suppose.”

“Me too, actually. Would you like to walk with me for a few first? I should probably be seen by more people before leaving.”

Justin nodded and helped her up like a proper gentleman. They walked around the ballroom, occasionally pausing to shake hands and smile with various friends of their parents, introducing each other as “a friend from school” when needed. Thankfully, no one requested more details than that and both of their parents had been very vague about what school they were at. Unfortunately, the crowd of adults was just as large as earlier, though a lot of children their age had already been taken home or were off playing and talking on the fringes.

At one point, Jessa ran up to them, gave Hermione a fierce hug, glared at Justin for a while before nodding, and ran off again. Hermione admitted she was only slightly less confused than he was.

Eventually, Hermione caught sight of her parents. 

“Hermione, dear, there you are. We’ll be leaving soon but please, introduce us to your friend,” her mum said, mouth stretched into a beaming smiling.

“Mum, dad, this is Justin Finch-Fletchley. He’s… a classmate. At my new school. Justin, my parents, Doctors Leonard and Roseanne Granger.”

“Doctors Granger,” Justin repeated, shaking her father’s and almost-kissing the back of her mother’s hand.

“Oh, a classmate of Hermione’s! How great,” her mum was gushing, though thankfully quietly. “We had no clue if anyone else in the circles could possibly be attending. Didn’t bother very much to find out; Hermione doesn’t particularly love these sort of gatherings anyways. She prefers her books so very much. Are you two in the same year?”

“Yes, we are.”

A few minutes later, her mum gave enough of a break in her comments and questions that Hermione was able to turn to Justin. “Would you like help trying to find your parents now?”

He agreed and, promising to meet her parents by the doors in ten to fifteen minutes, they walked away from her parents and back into the crowd.

“Sorry, my mum gets very excited at the prospect of me making friends. I never had very many as a child.”

“It’s no problem. Probably best my parents don’t see you too clearly unless you want to hear it again. Not that I don’t want them to know about you for some reason or anything. That’d be weird. But she was worried about a new school no one’s ever heard of and I figured it’d be hard to meet up with your parents on time if you got snarled in. Oh, that could be them... Yeah, it definitely is.”

“I’ll trust your opinion on avoiding too many questions. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, back at the castle probably. Have a nice rest of your break.”

***

They exchange nods the rest of the year but somehow they manage to not attend any of the same events that summer (she looks out for him each time) and the head nodding continues during second year until Justin voices his opinion that Harry’s the heir and is quickly petrified. 

Hermione alternatively feels angry at and sorry for him.

She bursts out crying the morning of the thirty-first of December, remembering how she thought she might have been getting another friend exactly a year ago. He’s technically in the same room as her, but Madame Pomfrey had carefully constructed a wall of dividers some time ago to separate the petrified patients from other ones. No one’s around to notice her tears trickling into the fur that still covers most of her skin.

***

She’s not convinced the Headmaster told her parents the full truth about her petrified condition. Naturally, she’s torn since that seems like something he should really be doing, muggle parents or not, but she also doesn’t really want her parents worrying about her even more than they naturally do. 

She mulls over this two weeks after the end of the semester, while sitting with Justin in a cold sort of silence on a tiny, overgrown balcony at the annual Summer Gala. The air around them is nearly sticky with the humid heat. It takes half an hour for her frustration to bubble over and she begins ranting about it.

He nods and contributes more injusticies when she slows down until they’re both too angry at the system for her to be angry at him or him to be scared of her. At some point, he gives what she decides is a sufficiently sincere apology about the whole Harry-heir thing and Hermione promises she’ll mention it in her next letter to Harry. She does but she doesn’t realize until much later that several of her letters from earlier in the summer never made it to him.

Eventually, they settle down and end up talking about the lingering effects caused by weeks (and months) long petrification and what little they could remember from their time cursed. Then they move onto book recommendations, both magical and muggle. 

When his parents finds and scolds both of them for avoiding socializing the entire night, they’re ranking professors based off inane, random criteria.

They had decided that Professor Flitwick would actually be the best at baking fruit pies, upsetting the obvious top choice of Professor Sprout who they ranked as second (Hagrid is last).

They both apologize and make the necessary rounds together.

By the end of it, they’re doubtlessly friends and start calling each other by their first names. They only see each other twice more over the summer—society is big enough that there’s multiple, overlapping circles and their parents are in rather different ones—but they stick together when possible.

***

Third year goes by in an exhausted whirlwind for Hermione. Then, the Summer Gala is a mere two days after they get back on the express and although she spends most of them sleeping, she’s barely managing to keep up the polite small talk by sundown.

He ends up taking them to a quiet bit of the gardens and reads the book she brought while she takes a nap, using his jacket as a pillow. She feels guilty but he insists (“it’s so hot out here anyways”) and they manage to get through the night without any awkward questions from anyone but his sister Lara, a rather precocious seven years old.

It’s the first time Hermione meets Lara and both of them are entirely charmed by the other. Justin finds himself slightly worried for reasons he can’t quite articulate.

***

Several people pass by close enough for her to hear them—and doubtlessly for them to hear her sobs—but most of them thankfully veer away so they don’t have to pass the girl crying on the little used but very much public staircase at the end of the Yule Ball.

Malfoy unfortunately does go past but merely gives a superior snort in her direction before moving on and apparently forgets about it by the time term resumes because he never brings it up.

Justin is the first to stop. He coughs a little so she looks up. His fingers run under his perfectly fitted collar as he grimaces slightly.

“I thought we’d be able to avoid the whole hiding from the masses thing this time.”

She laughs, the sound wet and disgusting to even her own ears. He rummages around his pockets and gives her a mass-manufactured paper tissue from a plastic pack of them. Thank god, she hated the handkerchiefs that were still the standard in the wizarding world. 

“I had hoped so too. All in all, despite all… this, it was still more fun than the usual. Not all classical music and adults and T.V. shows we’ll probably never get around to watching.”

He made an agreeing humming noise. “I do like classical well enough though.”

“Oh, me too, but the Weird Sisters were fun.”

The band had left by then, as had much of the student population, and a gramophone had been playing a bizarre mix of every genre imaginable for the last hour. They could just barely hear something classical playing.

“Come on, since we’re in agreement, wipe your eyes and let’s go dance.”

The gramophone has gone on to the next song--probably something by Chopin--by the time they were waltzing. Unfortunately for them, for some reason, the wizard version was slightly different to the muggle one, a fact they had already spent plenty of time complaining about to their respective friends (who completely did not get it) and to each other. 

Earlier, they had gone with the wizard version but with few people around, they went with what they had learned young, standing on their parents’ feet. 

It was far from the first time they had danced together anyways. 

“Is that the same dress you... wore at some point?”

“Yes, to Madame Noether’s Midnight Dinner last summer. I still can’t believe my parents made me go to that one. I was absolutely dead by the time we got home. But yes, same dress. I figured at most, you and Miranda Abrahams would have seen it. Though I’m not sure if she was even at the dinner,” she explained, mentioning the one other Hogwarts student whose family was part of London Society. 

She had spotted Miranda, a quiet, seventh year Hufflepuff, earlier that evening but rarely interacted with her at Hogwarts or at muggle events.

The song ended soon after and abruptly switched to something that sounded new and almost electronic, leaving them giggling as they left the Great Hall. 

Justin walks her up to the fourth floor before she insists she’ll be fine and he’d be best off going to his own dorms. By the time she was faced with the mirrors in the Gryffindor girls’ bathrooms, the redness of her eyes had long disappeared.

***

Hermione refuses to go to any of the gatherings the summer before fifth year. In fact, for the month and a half she was home with her parents, she refused to go outside the house except to visit the local library and grocery store.

Her parents are equal parts confused and worried.

She had been severely instructed not to write to Harry (she tried once anyways but got no reply and called on the phone another time but his cousin picked up and she immediately hung up) and found Ron to be a rather slow correspondent so she finds herself owling Ginny and Justin the most. Thankfully, he has an owl of his own and Ginny is usually able to borrow Pig. Occasionally, she simply calls Justin over the phone as well, but sometimes, it’s hard to get the words out and every so often, she ends up hurriedly saying bye, hangs up, and runs to her room to stew in prickly, hot tears she’s unable to actually cry. 

Sometimes, his voice sounds wet as he quickly ends the calls too. Back in their second year, Cedric had started an informal club to teach young muggleborns about wizarding culture. He had hoped to establish something official and more wide spread eventually. Justin had been among the earliest of the students who had participated.

She overhears her mum telling her dad one evening that Justin had also been refusing to go out in public very much and that there was clearly something wrong happening in the magical world but they just didn’t know how to find out what.

***

It’s slightly after the DA starts meeting that Hermione realizes that nearly no one at Hogwarts is aware they are rather close friends. They had never decided to hide it and she had never intentionally done so, but while in the halls of Hogwarts, she ran with her friends and he with his.

They were arranging dummies for a meeting when she brings it up. She keeps her voice low as Luna’s not too far away, marking ‘X’s on the ground at regular intervals, though she’s not sure the flighty girl would have even noticed if they were yelling. 

“You’re right. I’ve never tried hiding it either but I guess our muggle lives just don’t matter that much here.”

She grimaced. He was right. She couldn’t blame Harry for preferring to avoid the muggle world since his experience of it was rather painful, but the way that even the pro-muggle wizards and witches tended to disregard muggle going-ons left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Perhaps it’s not a bad thing for it to be a secret, more or less. I give it three years max before it gets obviously worse for muggleborns. Maybe even before we graduate.”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah, sounds good.”

***

Her parents desperately wanted her home for the holiday break after three years of her staying at Hogwarts and she originally agreed, but couldn’t bear to leave the Weasleys after Arthur was attacked.

In the end, she managed to arrange it so that she’d stay at Hogwarts while they went on what was supposed to be a family ski trip but she went home for a few days around New Years, which meant attending the ball.

Having not been to a society event for well over a year, she sticks mostly to her parents for the first hour before they finally shoo her off to socialize with other kids her age.

She manages to chat with a few girls she used to be kind of friends with but all of them attend the same two schools so they mostly compare stories and complain about learning chemistry and calculus and she eventually wanders off. She finds Justin soon after, with a group of boys she barely knew but soon, the conversation turns from football to GSCEs and both of them quickly slip away.

They talk to a few adults and eventually end up in a mostly empty coat closet, making increasingly wild contingency plans until someone wrenches the door open. They scramble backwards, reaching for wands that weren’t in their usual places. 

It’s an unimpressed looking server with sweat dotting his greying hairline.

“Teenagers!” he growls. “Get out, take your hanky panky elsewhere.”

A deep flush crept up both of their necks as they rush out of the closet and into the silent and freezing topiary garden.

Hermione uses a compact mirror to check her appearance then gazes critically at Justin. Both of them are rather red from their embarrassment and recent exertion—they really should start physical training in the DA actually—but otherwise, they’re no more ruffled than anyone else who had spent time dancing that evening. 

“I have no idea why he thought we were, uh, doing anything, but you know, I’ll take it since that means he didn’t seem to notice we were making battle plans,” she says finally, pulling her faux fur wrap more tightly around herself. Only a few flakes are falling but the wind more than made up for it despite the tall hedges around them.

“Yeah. It was weird.”

They stand quietly for a few minutes, heads tilted back to try to see the stars above them but London was too close. Nothing like the skies over Hogwarts.

“You’re not dressed nearly warm enough for us to be out here long. Let’s go back in, the countdown can’t be far away.”  
In fact, it starts just after they get inside.

They were still outside the ballroom when the cheerful voice over the audio system calls ‘2’ and Justin stops her.

For a moment, she thought he was going to actually kiss her, with the tradition and all.

He’s reasonably attractive. On two separate occasions, she had agreed, with great but mostly hidden amusement, when other girls at Hogwarts had called him cute (actually he looks better in muggle clothes than the Hogwarts robes). But she feels the same about him as she does about Harry, a brother in all ways that mattered so she was relieved when he gives her a barely-there kiss on the cheek before hugging her tightly.

Her memory flashed back to the first time they talked, in some Hogwarts courtyard their first year, a heavy book in her lap.

“Thank you for being my friend.”

***

They spent the summer before sixth year figuring out how to create a muggleborn support and communication network, amongst other war preparations.

A lot of well-meaning wizards and witches were still convinced that they weren’t headed towards another war, even though they did accept Voldemort was indeed back, but all the muggleborns they talked to agreed it was on the horizons and they’d be among the first targeted.

So lots and lots of prep.

It was only that summer that they realized they didn’t even live that far from each other. Too far to walk and meet, yes, but there was a small but busy cafe that both of them could get to in under half an hour if she takes the public bus.

By mid-July, they accept that phone is the best choice for a method of communication between the fairly wide network of muggleborns they had been slowly building up over the past few months. 

It wasn’t ideal. A lot of older muggleborns, once they left their families, didn’t have them and not even all muggle families had them either. But post would be too slow, whether by royal mail or by owl and owl would be more easily tracked by dark wizards in high places. They had rejected floo almost immediately.

So it was mostly phones. Some other methods were patched in at points, but they decided to not keep track of them and definitely did not write down details. Decentralized was better, according to some books about world war battle tactics Hermione had borrowed from the library. 

Two weeks later, they buy a simple cell phone (the benefits of rich parents) and find that storing it turned off in a bag lined with tin foil is sufficient to keep it from fritzing out in magical environments. They test it at the Burrow during one of Hermione’s visits there (the twins know an absurd amount of muggle physics and chemistry, she realizes, as they’re the ones who directed her towards Faraday cages in the first place) then in Diagon Alley when Justin is nearby during a trip into the city. They figure they could get far enough away from Hogwarts grounds during Hogsmeade trips to turn it on and check for any messages or voicemails.

“Lara’s gonna be eleven in just a couple years,” he reminds her one day, in mid-August. They were taking a break and had sugar-sweet coffee drinks that would make her parents cringe.

“You think…?”

“Yeah. I mean, I was already suspecting it years ago of course but at this point I’m certain. Our parents and her too. They haven’t even made her apply to one of the public schools, Hermione. And you know how those go. Our parents want to talk about it as little as I do though I imagine their reasons are rather different from mine.”

“We have to end it quickly then. We should work on the inter-house communication networks too. I’d like to have something in place by Halloween honestly. And I still say we need an in with Slytherin house.”

***

They decide that Hermione should present most of their plans as more or less solely hers. Justin takes some credit for the little-mentioned muggleborn network, but they want to keep the extent of their friendship hidden from even the rest of their collaborators and figure that it’s unlikely claiming responsibilities would make Hermione a bigger target than she already was, with the whole best friend of Harry thing going on. Justin, however, was mostly regarded as just another muggleborn and there was his little sister to consider too.

It ends up being them, Ginny, Susan, Padma, and Terry. They divide up tasks by the second week of the semester. Susan focuses on making connections with the outside world while Ginny and Padma work on recruitment and organization among fellow students. Terry and Hermione focus on broader organization and research, quickly deciding on arranging into cells so that one leak couldn’t destroy their entire system like it had last year. Justin continues focusing on muggleborns. 

By mid-October, they establish a Slytherin liason in the form of Tracey Davis, a halfblood in their year who had been raised by her muggleborn mother after her father was killed for refusing to join the Death Eaters in the first war. She wasn’t the best connected, but she was friends with people who were high up enough in the Slytherin hierarchy and could actually be trusted.

Hermione makes vague mentions about the whole thing to Harry and Ron about a month in but they didn’t seem to catch on and she prefers steering their efforts towards whatever drivel Dumbledore was currently feeding Harry.

Not that she manages to get much from Ron most of the year.

It’s both frustration and badly stomped down heartbreak that fuels her tears whenever Ron was concerned. 

_It’s not like you can’t manage a love life and help with the war effort at the same time,_ she cries to Ginny one day in late November. _Look at you. You’re doing fine._

In early January, she has an argument with Ron himself that leaves her in a murderous rage and she destroys two dozen dummies in the Room of Requirement before sobbing herself to sleep. 

_You’re being unreasonable with all of your— your jealousy. I don’t get it, Hermione, I don’t get why you’d even be jealous of the fact that I managed to get a girlfriend. It’s not like you couldn’t get a boyfriend if you want one. I mean, both Cormac and Justin like you plenty. Maybe they should be jealous of each other._

And yes, perhaps she did describe Justin in unnecessary detail when she checked that Ron means Justin Finch-Fletchley. And yes, the scene Ron saw and referenced is on the suggestive side. 

The night after Justin got back from winter holidays, he tells her about society news and progress on the muggleborn network that eventually devolves into them talking about Lara who’s been reminding Justin more and more of Hermione every time he goes home. Then they ended up talking about how neither of them wanted her to come into the wizarding world as it was and they ended up crying together, her half way in his lap so they could hide their face away behind the other’s shoulder, which was apparently when Ron saw them.

_You know what? Fine. I am close to Justin. We met before Hogwarts because our parents are in the same sort of social circles. Do you know how many people in this entire bloody castle I’ve known for longer than six years? Literally just him. But we’re also just friends and I would like it if one of my alleged best friends doesn’t think I’d lie to him about something as important as who I might or might not be in a relationship with._

She ran away without letting him respond.

***

They agree over the phone that it was probably a bad idea to go to the summer gala this year but go it anyway. It was probably the last time they’d attend any society event at all.

Beyond the absolute minimal small talk they had to do, the two of them spend nearly the entire time dancing, only excusing themselves for drinks and breaks when the music selection would result in having to switch partners for portions of the song.

They whisper about nonconsequential things. A curious though useless charm she had discovered while doing research. The result of the latest football games. The fact that Madame Skylar seemed to be drunk before sundown.

They get a couple suspicious glances from the most eagle-eyed of the older ladies and a few questioning ones from their peers (the ones they had been friends with before they began pulling away more and more as war loomed ever closer. Mostly his former friends and a couple of her cousins really).

That was fine. When both of them disappeared soon after, shortly before their families stopped attending, the rumor was rather unsurprisingly that they had run off together to elope and now their parents were off chasing them through Europe.

They suspected such a rumor would form without any help, though they also left instructions with Miranda Abrahams (who had decided to stay in the muggle world permanently and whose faked death certificate had been smuggled into the Magical Ministry earlier) to stroke them further.

It was useful. There was no way for them to erase the memory of both of their families from the mind of every muggle they had encountered after all. Thankfully both of his parents were only children as was her father and her mother and uncle actually don’t talk often at all.

They had considered sending their families to the same locations, the Grangers and Finch-Fletchleys long having become friends, but decided they’d be far more conspicuous that way, no matter where they ended up. So the Grangers, as the Wilkins, went to Australia because that was where Hermione was able to secure visas for them, while the Finch-Fletchleys, as the Keenes, went to the tiny country of Monaco since Lara, when she was very young, mentioned wanting to go there for little apparent reason and there was virtually no wizarding population there.

Unlike Hermione, Justin did leave himself in his family’s memories, modified so that they believed he had been attending a muggle boarding school in northern France since age eleven and was currently working on an independent study there that summer before starting his last year. Of course, instead of attending school, he settled himself near the Channel to assist in the escape of witches and wizards abroad.

Hermione has him take Crookshanks and goes to the Burrow herself and waits for him to owl her his new phone number. The phone wrapped in tin foil was for emergencies only, of course, and she never uses it so in the end, the string of digits on a scrap of muggle notebook paper is their last correspondence until after the Final Battle.

***

Voldemort had been dead for less than two hours when Justin manges to get to Hogwarts. Susan yells his name across the busy Great Hall and Hermione’s neck snaps up despite her whole body being sore. 

She throws her arms around him as Hermione scrambles up and towards them.

“I’m fine. I’m safe, Susan, I’m safe. Where’s Ernie and Hannah? Susan, I’m safe. I’m here. Please tell me they’re fine.” 

Susan’s half sobbing into his shoulder so Hermione answers instead. “Both injured but stable. Closer to the hospital wing, somewhere quieter.”

“Thank god,” he says, rubbing Susan’s shoulder before gesturing that Hermione might as well join them in the hug.

She shakes her head slightly and instead carefully unlocks Susan’s arms from around his neck. He looks strange to her, normally light brown hair nearly black. She can see some smudges of dye on his neck and ears.

“Come on, Susan, let him sit down. He’s been apparating across the entire country to get here I’m sure.”

“You’ve what?”

“I was in northern France. Took the ferry over as soon as I could after getting the message on the coin and began apparating my way north. Don’t look so worried, Su. I wasn’t the one who was in battle.”

***

His family was recovered and given back their memories within a month. Lara was awfully angry and refused to talk to Justin until she got her own Hogwarts letter the next summer. 

It took far longer for Hermione to get a chance to go to Australia and find her parents. She ends up not going until after they return to Hogwarts and sit for their N.E.W.T.S. He offers to go with her but she refuses, as the Ministry would prefer he start his job in the Ministry Law Office immediately.

She’s sure the magical creatures department would also like her to start immediately but they didn’t dare say a thing about it.

Like with the Finch-Fletchleys, she is able to recover their original memories but unlike them, the Grangers decide to stay in their new home.

It makes fixing their relationship a far slower process and Hermione hates it, but she hates the idea of guilting them back to England even more.

Neither of them ever go back to Society. 

Partly, it was the fact that most people still believed the rumors that the two of them had run away to elope and they didn’t want to touch that situation with a ten meter pole. Justin’s parents never confirmed or denied the rumors while Lara spent a great deal of time suggesting they were true without ever outright saying it. (She becomes the first muggleborn Slytherin in well over a century and neither of them are particularly surprised.)

But it’s also in part because neither of them can imagine weaving together their magical lives of being war veterans and government employees with the ritzy life of a Society member. Most of them didn’t even have professions; Hermione’s parents were unusual in that both of them had worked and she was fairly sure they were allowed just because her mum came from a very old and still wealthy family. 

Hermione shudders at the thought of possibly pulling Ron into that world as their relationship becomes serious and progresses to marriage. Justin’s eventual wife, Winona, is from a wealthy pureblood family so they imagine she’d do better but no, they never feel a strong pull back to Society. (Lara slowly stops attending too as she goes through Hogwarts and they feel even less reason.)

There were Ministry functions anyways. They were too frequent if anything, Hermione thought. Sometimes they were actual balls with classical music and what both of them continued to refer to as wizarding waltz. 

Both of them were comfortable with the magical variation within a year of starting their Ministry careers, of course, but they still use the steps from their childhood too, when they dance together away from the main floor full of other partners. 

(Ron and Winona make a habit of watching from nearby and loudly expressing their continued bemusement until Hermione and Justin quit because they’re laughing too much.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and extra thanks to those who beta read this for me. This sat in my drafts for two full years but I guess I'm back into fanfic writing now. Wild.


End file.
